The Seventh Circuit reconsidered some of its earlier precedent last week and held that a school’s policy requiring male basketball players wear their hair cut above their ears violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendment Acts of 1972. The 3-1 panel decision in Hayden v. Greensburg Cmty. Sch. Corp., No. 13-1757 (7th Cir. Feb. 24, 2014), is one of the circuit’s few school cases addressing hair length in decades, prompting questions whether its older grooming code holdings survive Price Waterhouse.

In the case, the coaches of the male basketball and baseball teams at the public high schools in Greensburg, Indiana, required players to keep their hair cut short to promote “team unity” and a “clean-cut image.” One basketball player, A.H., wished to wear his hair longer, saying that he did not “feel like himself” with shorter hair. A.H.’s parents, the Haydens, sued on behalf of their son claiming that the school’s hair grooming code “intruded upon their son’s liberty interest in choosing his own hair length, and thus violates his right to substantive due process, and [ ]… because the policy applies only to boys and not girls wishing to play basketball, the policy constitutes sex discrimination.” The 7th Circuit found for the school district on the substantive due process claim. The court found that A.H.’s hair length was not a fundamentally protected right under Glucksberg, but instead a “harmless liberty,” where “the government need only demonstrate that the intrusion upon that liberty is rationally related to a legitimate government interest." The Haydens, the court concluded, failed to show that the hair-length policy failed rational-basis review. The circuit court reversed, however, the district court’s finding that the Haydens did not make out a prima facie case of discrimination. The hair length policy for the male basketball and baseball team members did not apply to male athletes in other sports and did not apply to female athletes at all, and the circuit court noted, “there is no facially apparent reason why that should be so. Girls playing interscholastic basketball have the same need as boys do to keep their hair out of their eyes, to subordinate individuality to team unity, and to project a positive image. ... Given the obvious disparity, the policy itself gives rise to an inference of discrimination.” Finding “no rational, let alone exceedingly persuasive, justification has been articulated for restricting the hair length of male athletes alone,” the court remanded the case to the lower court to determine appropriate relief on the Haydens’ equal protection and sex discrimination claims. Read Hayden v. Greensburg Cmty. Sch. Corp., No. 13-1757 (7th Cir. Feb. 24, 2014) here.